Wikipedia:Long-term Unsourced Articles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The purpose of this policy is to improve the overall reliability and accuracy of Wikipedia by automatically deleting articles which have remained unsourced for a long period of time, after a final warning period.

As stated in WP:Attribution, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source. Properly sourced articles are critical to the reliability and accuracy of Wikipedia as a whole. When articles are created which lack proper sources, they may be tagged with notices such as {{Unsourced}} in order to notify editors to add proper sources. However, hundreds of articles exist that have not been edited more than a few times or in many months; these articles have fallen through the cracks. This issue has been a major issue and has led to numerous occurrences of negative media coverage. Articles that have remained unsourced for over 3 months should be placed in a status warning of imminent deletion in order to offer editors a final chance to source the article. After another 3 months those articles will be speedily deleted. Although some valid articles may be deleted, this process will ensure a higher reliability and accuracy of Wikipedia and also prevent articles from indefinitely having unsourced information which may be incorrect.